I once worked delivering pizzas. One of the other drivers, this guy named Mark, was a little ‘off’, and not in a fun way. In a creepy Deliverance sort of way. Eric could tell you. He was a nice enough guy, but there were certain things, things that mashed on my buttons long and hard until I was all wailings and seething gnashes of teeth.

Things like, “I’m not doing the pans at the end of the night. That’s woman’s work, Beth.” He wasn’t kidding in the slightest. I wasn’t either, when I threatened to make him eat those pans. That or beat him fucking senseless(er) with them. Same with mopping. In his simple countryfucked way, he warn’t goh-na mawp. I told him he were goh-na mawp if he wanted to continue living his life without the cumbersome annoyance of having a mophandle splintered and broken off in his ass.

You know, the rectal part. Of the ass, not the floor-scrubbing implement. To my knowledge, there is no assigned rectal part to a mop.

But then again, I’m not as pedigreed in this type of knowledge as some of you may be are. Correct me if you must.

Anyway, the thing I most remember about Mark is this: I used to drive a truck. It was a kickass little truck and it enabled me to navigate over curbs and people and the like with ease. I was a fool for selling that truck, but that is neither here nor there in relation to this story.

So I drove this truck, and every time I went to work I’d notice a coke can here, a candy wrapper there thrown into the bed. Always when Mark and I shared a shift.

So I warned him not to be doing that foolish shit; it was ridiculous to expect me to clean up his messes (oh, the rich irony of it all is that his day job was working for the city as a garbage man some days, a random litter-picker-upper-in-medians-and-ditches on others), especially in light of the fact that there were no less than four huge trash cans in the store and a gigunda, never-full dumpster right next to where our vehicles idled between runs. I warned him not once, not twice, but in an uncharacteristic display of restraint and patience, I warned that sumbitch three times. That third time held the standard “Okay, I’m gonna fuck you up if this continues. Really.” disclaimer.

That amounted to the square root of fuck all.

One afternoon found me with not only a couple of Coke cans (fucking COKE! I hateCoCola!!) glinting there in the truckbed, but a napkin or two and an empty pizza box. That dastardly bastard had taken lunch out in the bed of my truck so that he could crank up his car stereo and listen to Paul Harvey (his obsessive daily habit), which we quite cruelly and not-at-all unusually would not let him partake of in the cinderblock building.

“Okay. Okay,” thought I, “let’s fix this shit here, ole girl.”

I volunteered to take the cans out for a midday wash. This is where you drag those fifty-five gallon Rubbermaid monstrosities out to the dumpster, empty them, generously douse them in bleach and scrub rather bitterly and haphazardly (while cursing your very existence before God and All The Saints) before rinsing.

I dumped the contents of two out of the four into Mark’s car before I determined that roughly the equivalent amount of trash relative to what he’d pitched in my truck (an approximate five to one ratio, as I recall) had been gifted back to him. ‘Twas marvelous, the way it draped in a lovely fashion across the bucket seats in the front of the car.

The day was hot. The deliveries were slow. The mess cooked for a couple hours before its new owner came across it.

I’ll have my revenge, thank you. Don’t gimme no garbage if you don’t want no garbage back. And I’ll quintuple that shit if it is at all in my power to do so.

you forgot the bit about where you realized the error of your ways, and stripped naked, before dousing yourself with the remaining trash, and offering mark “favours”

delmer4.26.2003

wow. pizza delivery. thank’s for the Pizza Smut flashbacks!

I did the whole pizza delivery stint back in the day when Pizza smut used leased ford rangers as delivery vehicles. I had no problems with the other employees, save the manager who was a raging ass to the sixth (yes count ‘em , SIXTH!) magnitude.

Now that I think of it, I have had two serious bouts of passive aggresive behavior in my life, oddly enough both at places of menial labor, and both fueled by the respective (lame assed, prick gobbling) manager(s) I reported to.

At Osco, I would throw various pressurized items into the incinerator, (hairspray goes BOOM!) and later, anything that struck my fancy would wind up in the box crusher (heavy glass bottles of perfume make the most fascinating popping sound). If my manager was living up to his full flaring hemeroidal potentiall, I would also take a price gun out on the floor and apply wonderfully creative and impressive discounts to various items, usually in the absurdly inflated,First Aid area. The First Aid area, BTW is always prced high due to the mindet of ” the customer who is purchasing first aid items is fucked up, or is shopping for someone who is, and NEEDS this item NOW, and probablly doesn’t have time to bargain shop” ideaology .

Anyway, Pizza delivery…they actually had leased trucks that the delivery crews treated well, rather harshly. Our delivery area was riddled with large parcels of undeveloped scrub desert. By using these patches as well trodden shortcuts,(or longcuts depending on the mood) we managed to blow three transmission and chew up 4 sets of brakes and rotors in just over 3 months!

Imagine the classic video game Ivan Stewart’s Super Off Road…sans funky banjo soundtrack,and with a pizza flying about the cab of truck, and you will have a pretty good idea of what it was like.

I think Mark was a rapist or child molester waiting to happen. He was very experienced at “playing dumb”, but sometimes I could see a cold glint of ratlike intelligence in his beady, ratlike little rat eyes.

What creeped me out most was how he constantly masturbated when he didn’t think anyone was watching. When the manager told him to stop, he took up ‘rubbing’ himself on the central table [where they cut the pizzas]. He’d rock, back and forth, prodding his crotch with the metal corner of the table.

What a creep. I wonder if they’ve found his buried bodies yet.

timato4.26.2003

um. gross. i was all ready with the ‘take that, motherfucker!’ show of support, but eric has just ruined that whole vibe. now i’m like, ‘hope he doesn’t learn how to work a ‘puter and start luring kids to his house.’

Did you know that when I told Big Toyota Bossman about it, that he was doing it in plain sight of the customers, he pulled him (quite professionally) into the office and (quite maddeningly UNprofessionally) said,

“BETH says that….”

I could have killed him.

Angel: darling, perhaps you missed the story about my pregnancy-induced madness. It can be found –>HERE< --

Bartlett: I am beyond traumatized at the very thought. Keep that shit to yourself!

del: this particular incident happened at Hominos. I did my time at Pizza Slut, too….and the manager there was a horrible alcoholic (remember Kevin, erique? he’s since gotten a couple DUIs and treatment) prone to mood swings and assy behavior.

Al: (welcome, newbie!) it’s because they’ve never had to immerse already-raw knuckles in the greasy gray water-detergent concotion and scrub away…fuckers.

timato: no worries. the man could barely work a zipper, much less a ‘puter…